5 THINGS TO KNOW

Gay hero Gloria Estefan to be honored at National LGBTQ Task Force Gala.

Two weeks after learning she would be a 2017 recipient of a Kennedy Center honor in December, pop star Gloria Estefan will be honored in October at the 2017 National LGBTQ Task Force Gala. Estefan, the task force said, earned the National Leadership Award for her work to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.

5 THINGS TO KNOW

Policy on transgender troops now more than just a tweet.

A month after he announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military via Twitter, Donald Trump has issued a memo on how the decision is to be implemented. The two-and-a-half-page note says Defense Secretary Jim Mattis must consider a service member’s ‘deployability’ when deciding whether to eject them from the military. That means that if they are unable to serve in a war zone, take part in training or serve on a ship for months, they must go, the Wall Street Journal reported. It has not been spelled out exactly how the criteria will be assessed, however the Trump administration seems to be implying that it does not believe transgender service people are deployable. The policy gives the Pentagon six months to […]

HEROES

More than just a gay synagogue.

At Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco, Rabbi Mychal Copeland leads Shabbat services with a rainbow tallit around her shoulders. The synagogue newsletter is called “The Jewish Gaily Forward.” But the shul that has been known since its 1977 founding as San Francisco’s gay synagogue is now reaching out to a broader community and de-emphasizing its identity as an LGBT-specific congregation.

5 THINGS TO KNOW

Southern Decadence, the “Gay Mardi Gras” kicks off on Labor Day in New Orleans.

Southern Decadence, the gigantic annual LGBT gathering sometimes called “Gay Mardi Gras,” is expected to fill up the French Quarter as usual from Aug. 31 to Labor Day (Sept. 4). Jeffrey Palmquist, a former Southern Decadence grand marshal, said no one’s quite sure how many people attend the weekend of partying and parading, “but 250,000 wouldn’t be out of the ballpark.”

LIFESTYLES

180,000 rainbow balls transforms Montreal’s gayborhood.

For the past six summers, pink balls have been strung up like strands of pearls over a segment of Montreal’s Sainte Catherine Street East, home to the city’s Gay Village. The street is closed to cars from May to September and the space is used to host outdoor cafes and concerts. This year, as the Gay Village planned its 35th anniversary celebration, and the city geared up to host its first-ever Pride festival (which kicked off earlier this month), it made sense to turn the balls technicolor.

5 THINGS TO KNOW

“What Would You Do” takes on transgender harassment.

How would you react to seeing a clothing store employee discriminating against a transgender woman simply for shopping there? That instance of transphobia is exactly what a recent episode of ABC’s What Would You Do? sets out to answer, setting up the situation and seeing how regular, unscripted people would do when faced with the confrontation.

BUSINESS

An LGBT dorm floor at UNLV.

When resident assistant Sawyer Spackman heard at an October University of Montana conference about other schools that had LGBTQ floors in their residence halls, he pitched the idea to Residential Life Coordinator Andrew Lignelli. Could UNLV do something like that at South Complex? Lignelli’s reaction was a quick “no.” There wasn’t much time to develop the idea and he figured the university would want to focus on the existing themed floors in the residence halls.